For several years there has been a (sometimes fiersome) discussion wether or not bakers yeast can be used to make a decent wine. Newbies often ask this question on winemaking forums and experienced winemakers immediately respond with yelling that using bakers yeast is totally out of the question, and certainly bad winemaking practice.

So if the newbies ask why this is there are lots of answers:- Bakers yeast wil only gain low alcohol as the yeast has no alcohol tolerancy.- Bakes yeast is produced for rising bread so it will produce low alcohol and loads of CO2.- Wine made with bakersyeast will not clear or clear only with great difficulty.- Bakers yeast will produce off-tastes- Bakers yeast will introduce a yeast taste in the wine- Bakers yeast will produce loads of sediment.

So reasons enough for not using bakersyeast. But still the question rises every now and then. Therefore I consulted all my winemakers literature.

Some books do not mention bakers yeast at all. Others mention that you should not use it without stating why. Still other books advise not to use bakers yeast for the reasons mentioned above. Jac Lambrechts (a famous writer of a Dutch/Belgium winemaking book) adds that bakesr yeast will multiply fast and therefore produces lots of CO2 which causes a lot of foam.

Only the well-known C.J. Berry writes in his book First steps in winemaking:Many winemakers, one must admid, still adhere to bakers or brewers yeast, but it is a pity to do so without having tried some of the excellent true wine yeasts now on the market.

Berry's book is still for many the winemakers bible, although dates back from 1960. Ans Berry as well as encyclopedias state that bakers yeast and wine yeast are related.

So where does the story, not to use bakerts yeast, come from ???

More and more I read in books (and winemakers magazines) stories that contradict. But more and more I start to believe that authors copy stories and ideas from eachother without testing if the ideas really are true.

So it's experimenting time !!!!

I decided to make two identical wines with just one different ingredient: wineyeast and bakers yeast.

To succeed such an experiment one has to create identical situations.

I started with making a yeast starter. I bought applejuice from the Aldi store branded Goldhorn (without any preservations) in one 1,5 liter pack.I boiled the juice and while stirring I added 150 grams sugar. After cooling down I added yeast nutrient and divided the starter between two disinfected pet bottles. In the first bottle I added 7 gram bakers yeast and in the second 7 gram wine yeast. On top of both bottles a piece of kitchen-paper was fastened with a rubber band.

The two starters were labeled and the bottles put next to eachother. So the circumstances were equal.

Next day the actual must was prepared.

I had two 5 liter secondaries. I wanted to make a wine with 12% alcohol. My calculations tell me I need 18 gram sugar for obtaining 1% alcohol.

I dissolved the sugar in 7 liter of the same applejuice I used for the starter. Again the juice was boiled (in one large pan) and while cooling down I added some citric acid and yeast nutrient.

When the must reached 25 degrees celsius I divided it between the 2 secondaries.

Meanwhile the yeast starters were fermenting vigorous.

The photo shows the starter with the bakers yeast on the left and the starter with wine yeast on the right side. It is obvious that there are differences during fermenting.

The bakers yeast indeed forms much more foam and is turbid.

The starters were added to the must, and after a short while both secondaries were fermenting vigorously. The phenomenon that showed in the starters repeated in the must:

As you can see the must on the left is turbid and foams heavily. This indeed is the must with bakers yeast.

About two weeks later fermenting was slow. The must with bakertsyeast still was turbid. Then I went on holliday. So unfortunately I can not tell you which one stopped fermenting first.

But seven weeks later both wines ended fermentation and started to clear.

Again the bottle on the left is the must with bakers-yeast. As you can see it is still a bit more turbid as the one on the right. And indeed the bakers yeast produced more sediment.

Jac Lambrechts and others were so far right that bakers yeast produces more foam and sediment (by faster multiplication and dying of the yeast). But the sediment was less as expected and just a fraction more as the wine yeast produced.

Again two weeks later (so 9 weeks after starting) the wine was clear. It was time to execute the necessary measurements to examine the differences.

First a visual examination.Both wines were clear and bright. Both wines have a yellow hue. But the wine made with the bakers yeast is a bit darker. When examined apart from eachother it is difficult to see the difference.

On the photo the bakers-yeast wine is on the right side.

Now for the second item of examiniation. We measure acidity with a titration kit.

The bakers yeast wine had an acidity of 9.The wineyeast wine had an acidity of 8

So the wineyeast uses some of the acid during fermentation and the bakers yeastdid not. Unfortunately I can not measure which acid was reduced. There was malic acid in the aplle juice and I added citric acid.

Next measurement was alcohol. The measurements were made with a wine weigher and with a hydrometer. All measurements were done using the cooking-method.

This really surprised me. Therefore saying that bakers yeast will just yield a low alcohol wine just is not true. But I was more astounded by the fact that bakers yeast really competed the wine yeast on the alcohol percentage.

In both cases the wine had residual sugars. It tasted sweet. The end SG was rather high. That also surprised me. A further investigation on this quickly explained the cause. I started from the calculation that to gain 12% alcohol I needed 216 gram sugar per liter. So I added 2160 grams for the 10 liter wine I made. But the apple-juice packaging stated that the juice itself already contained 100 gram sugar per liter. So my initial must did not have 216 but 316 gram sugar per liter. Therefore the end SG was indeed high.

This high starting SG brings some other questions foreward:- The original must had 316 grams sugar per liter which is enough to gain 18% alcohol. But both yeasts finished at 10.44% alcohol.- Both yeasts should have had trouble starting fermentation in a must with such a high SG, but fermentation went on without effort....

And now on to the last but not least important test: the drinking.

I designed two labels. The wine made with bakers yeast I named ballon-wijn (balloon wine). The wine made with wine yeast was called apple-juice wine. In a hurry (I always have a time shortage) I took a picture of another brand apple juice and put it on the label. But the right brand was Goldhorn (the brand from the Aldi Shops).

The name ballon-wijn was chosen on purpose. With this name a layman could not guess the wine was made with bakers yeast. This made the independend testing of my testing panel an objective happening.

I let several people taste both wines and have them give their opinion. In the first place everyone agreed that both were great wines. However the wine made with wine yeast had a mild taste. This can be due to the lower acidity, but general consensus was that the wine was soft as velvet.The wine made with bakers yeast had a more rough character, but had a broad taste spectrum. There are more components determined in the taste although they could not be defined.The test panel was devided about which of the both wines was best. But everybody was astonished to hear that the ballon-wijn was made with bakers-yeast.

A second test was made by having 6 people tasting the ballon-wijn without telling what it was. Everyone agreed that the wine was sweet but delicious. Again everyone was surprised that the wine was made with bakers yeast and several asked me to write down the recipe although none of them was a winemaker......

Certainly there was no off-taste or a yeast-taste as is often declared about bakers-yeast in winemaking.

Conclusion:

- Bakers-yeast produces more foam as wine-yeast- Bakers-yeast produces more sediment as wine-yeast- Bakers-yeast will clear just as fine as wine-yeast- Bakers-yeast gave a slightly darker color- Bakers-yeast did not alter the acidity- Bakers-yeast produces as much alcohol as wineyeast- Bakers-yeast certainly produces a fine wine- Bakers-yeast gives a little rough edge to the wine- Bakers-yeast gives more taste variation in the wine- Bakers-yeast gives no off-taste- Bakers-yeast give no yeast taste

Afterword:

Until now I have done this experiment just once. So it is not really representative.To have a valid research outcome more similar experiments should be made with different juices. May be this is something for the future.

However some of my friends have started to make apple-juice wine with bakers-yeast. The results are until now very good. One of them even gained an alcohol percentage of 14,8% with the above recipe. Way too much for an apple wine, but excellent for an experiment with bakers yeast.

In the meantime I myself have made several wines with bakers yeast. One of the wines was an apple-peach wine which I served my fellow winemakers at the Bibere-withsun weekend this year. Everyone of them was astonished that such a good wine could be made with bakers-yeast. About 10 wines I have made until now with bakers yeast and all of them came out great !!!

You will probably have noticed that these test wines were made without the use of sulphites. A next test will show if bakers yeast is sulphite resistant or not, but that was beyond the scope of this experiment. The experiment DID however show that it is possible to make a descent wine without using sulphite, but that is a different discussion alltogether.

So contrary to what we have always been told it is very well possible to make a good wine with bakers-yeast. Mr. Berry had suggested it already but stated that wine-yeast could yield a better result. But initially he stated that most winemakers still adhered to bakers yeast. And if it really produced awfull wines they would not have used it for so many years.

Many of us have made in their youth without any knowledge (like sg, acidity and hygiene) wine with bakers yeast. These 'wines' will have been failures in many cases and probably this resulted in the sories that bakers-yeast could not produce a good wine. But we are past this stage and do have the knowledge how to produce wine. So the failure was probably in other aspects as the yeast.

If one tastes two wines and one is made with bakers yeast one tastes differences. But these differences will probably also be noticed when two wines were made with different wine yeasts (another experiment coming up). When you drink the wines seperately you just drink two fine wines.

So am I tossing the wine yeast ???No I am not, but I am definately going to experiment more with bakers yeast. And when I am making wine and by coincidence have run out of wine-yeast I will certainly not hesitate to use bakers-yeast.

Luc Volders

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